The Charge

"If there's somebody here can you please play with my hair?"

The Case

I have a difficult time keeping track of all these paranormal hunter shows.
They all seem to involve some motivated folks driving around in vans, setting up
equipment likely purchased at their local Circuit City store closing, hanging
around some old, creepy buildings at night and generally freaking each other
out.

This being the fifth season of SyFy's big hit Ghost Hunters, I reckon
they've been at this for a good while, and though this is my first encounter
with their ectoplasmic shenanigans, it's obvious there's a game-plan they follow
from show to show: learn about a freaky place, jump in their van, interview
creeped-out people associated with the supposedly haunted locale, do their
equipment set-up, listen for weird sounds and watch for disturbances in their
infrared cameras, then cough up their findings to the interested parties. This
batch of Season Five episodes finds the Ghost Hunters—plumbers by day,
spectral wranglers by night—fanning out to such cursed places like the
Betsy Ross House, Belcourt Castle, Essex Country Hospital, Thornbury Farm,
Spalding Inn, the Edith Wharton Estate, Star Island (a shout-out to Portsmouth,
NH!) and plenty more spirit-infested zip codes.

Their results? Mixed. With so many of these shows out tracking down all this
paranormal malfeasance the obvious question pops up: Where are the ghosts? Look,
I'll spoil this for you right away, and say that, no, the nagging question of
the afterlife isn't once-and-for-all laid to rest (so to speak).

However, these guys manage to catch a few oddities on video. There's that
odd heat signature in the corner, those footstep sounds from the attic,
mysterious opening doors, weirdo echoes in the audio recordings and, my
favorite, the flashlight that turns on and off on command.

Offsetting some of these marginally cool enigmas is the usual selection of
unconvincing-bordering-on-laughable "activity." The faintest of sounds
(in a dumpy, antique house, natch), for example, or a gently shaking bed the
investigators insist is vibrating and one of the girls claiming a ghost is
pawing at her hair. The reanimated specter of a baboon perhaps?

Fans of the genre will find fun here, regardless of the evidence or lack
thereof. The investigators as characters are eccentric enough and the different
venues the Ghost Hunters check out are genuinely cool.

The DVDs feature 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen transfers and a 2.0 stere
mixes. Deleted scenes are it for extras. The packaging, however, might be the
worst I've ever dealt with. There are only three discs, but the case is a big
fat one that went out of style almost a decade ago; the DVDs are stacked on each
other, held together by a clumsy plastic holder that is a profound
pain-in-the-balls to negotiate.

The Verdict

Not Guilty, I guess, though I find the case a whole lot more terrifying.